This month we hear from art historian Dr. Lucy Kent. She speaks on the influence of Christian Science in the lives and work of three major 20th-century British artists—Winifred Nicholson, Ben Nicholson, and Barbara Hepworth. “I was very surprised to find out about this spiritual dimension of modern art, honestly,” she says, “because I had always thought that modern art was really about the material properties of painting.” This episode pulls excerpts from Kent’s comments in our November 2015 webcast, Evolutions of Christian Science in Great Britain.
(Note: At the time of the 2015 program, she was a doctoral candidate at University of Cambridge. She has since received her Ph.D. However, in order to be consistent with the original recording, she is not referred to as Dr. Kent in this episode.)
Lucy Kent, Ph.D.
Prior to receiving her Ph.D. from University of Cambridge, she attended the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, where her dissertation, “Spirituality and British Modernism: Christian Science influence in the work of Ben Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson, and Barbara Hepworth,” was shortlisted for the Association of Art Historians’ (UK) Dissertation Prize for 2011-12. Dr. Kent will be giving another lecture on Barbara Hepworth at the upcoming exhibition of her library at the Hepworth Wakefield over the summer and is now working as a researcher for an upcoming BBC series on American art, provisionally titled ‘Made in the USA’.
